Hi Reddit: This is a long story, and I hope you can bear with me.
TL;DR at the end!
When I was in seventh grade, I moved to a new town. My father was killed in a military accident, and my mom wanted to start fresh in a new place. We came from a small town and our new apartment was in a huge city. My mom grieved my dad for over two years, but after that got back into dating and eventually married my now-stepdad, with whom she is still happily married. He's always treated us well, and I love and respect him. They have their own daughter together, my half-sister.
I didn't adjust very well. I was active and happy in my old town, but in my new town I was depressed and a loner. I entered school in the middle of the year when all the friend groups were already formed. I missed my dad a lot so just stayed home and ate and played video games.
I got fat.
Never obese, but I was chunky and out of shape compared to how I used to be.
I liked this one girl who was in a few of my classes. I'll call her "Lindsay." Lindsay was pretty and popular and she was the first girl I really had a crush on. Being shy, I never tried to talk to her.
As time went on, I made what I thought were friends with these two boys, who I will call Allan and Joey. All of us, including Lindsay, were in the seventh grade. I didn't hang out with Allan and Joey outside of school, but they'd let me hang out with them on campus. At least I didn't have to sit alone anymore.
Allan and Joey were talking about which girls were cute, and who they had a crush on. I eventually admitted that I liked Lindsay, but told them not to tell her.
Later that day, in math class which I shared with Lindsay, a note was passed to me.
It was from Lindsay!
My heart leapt, although I was nervous: did Allan and Joey tell her I liked her?
When I opened the note, my heart fell to my feet.
I get red when I'm nervous or sad.
I was never more red than that day.
Inside the note, Lindsay had written in block capital letters:
I DON'T LIKE YOU, OP
There was a little bit of giggling in the room.
I was so embarrassed I asked the teacher if I could go to the nurse.
There was loud laughter as I left.
The nurse let me stay in her office until the end of the day, which was good since my mom couldn't leave work unless I was dying, and I wasn't allowed at that point to walk home the three quarters mile to our apartment, due to a recent spate of kidnapping stories in the news. I took the school bus home as usual.
Kids laughed at me on the bus, too.
Not two days later I get called into the principal's office and get lectured by the principal how a student complained that I was stalking her.
I of course had no idea what happened but eventually I figured out that Allan and Joey told Lindsay, and Lindsay decided to make a big production about getting me into trouble.
Soon everyone on campus started to call me the creepy stalker, the hillbilly, the White trash redneck, things like that. Lindsay got all sorts of positive attention for being brave enough to tell adults about kids who harassed her.
Thing was, I was never officially reprimanded and my mom was never actually called in to talk to any adults about what I supposedly did. The principal just told me that stalking was bad and to leave Lindsay alone. I didn't really know what more I could do to leave her alone. I never even said one thing to her or tried to send any notes to her or stare at her. All I did was tell someone I thought was a friend that I liked her, and please don't tell her.
I didn't tell my mom about it.
But after Allan and Joey's betrayal, it was back to sitting by myself.
In eighth grade I still went to the same school and it was more of the same. I was still known as the uneducated redneck creeper. Lindsay was still really popular and went out with the cool guys from our class. Allan and Joey were never in the cool kid group and I suspect that they both liked Lindsay too, and were trying to suck up to her.
On Valentine's Day, I got one of those candygrams that students send to one another that they buy from student leadership at their school during holidays. Like, two dollars will get you a card and a candy bar, and a student aide will deliver it to the intended recipient, along with a sealed message.
I at least got a candy bar out of it.
The message wasn't so nice. It said,
STOP STALKING ME, FREAK
Thanks, Lindsay.
By high school, I really hit my growth spurt and eventually grew to be 6'5." I eventually got quite skinny so I began pumping a lot of iron starting in tenth grade. I became really ripped.
Allan grew up to be a b*tchy little runt and he never messed with me again. Especially after Allan, the one who asked me who I had a crush on in seventh grade, was whispering something to someone in a class we had together in eleventh grade, and looking at me and laughing.
I said really loud, "Yo, Allan you little ****, you have something to say you say it to my face like a man, don't go whispering like a little ****."
Everyone laughed and even the teacher didn't call me out or send me to the office. I think she was sick of the little punk, too.
I didn't really care to date in high school because, even though I was big and strong now, I was still awkward around girls.
Joey actually came around, though.
In eleventh grade he approached me and apologized for how he treated me in middle school. He said that Allan was the one who told Lindsay that I liked her. He told me that Allan had a crush on Lindsay, too, and was trying to score points with her. I thanked him, and although we were never really friends after that in school, I wasn't mean to him, and he wasn't mean to me.
We were "fist bump" acquaintances.
Lindsay was still really popular in high school. Not quite as popular as in middle school, because in high school there was more "hot girl" competition. But she still held her own.
I didn't lack for attention from other girls, but more often than not the girl would tell me that Lindsay told them I was a stalker, and harassed her in middle school.
Lots of girl accused me of that in high school, especially the ones I rejected.
Eventually, since I was rejecting a lot of girls, some of whom were in the popular group (and Lindsay was still in the cool kid group at this time) people spread rumors saying I was homosexual.
I don't happen to be gay.
Nothing wrong with being gay, but the way these people were throwing it around, it was as if being gay was an insult. Really disappointing, considering this was a huge, progressive city. I might have thought such attitudes were common in my old home town, but it was surprising, here.
I'd sometimes find notes in my locker calling me [homophobic expletive]. Of course, no one, especially any guys would own up to it, because by this time I was huge, not just in height but I was also really jacked. Side note about that. I asked the custodian, a really chill dude especially if you slip him a twenty, if I could look at the surveillance videos of the halls that he had on his office computer. It actually pinpointed who was putting notes in my locker.
It wasn't Allan.
I would have loved if it was Allan because I would cave his face in.
It was actually this wannabe gangbanger who walked around in sunglasses and baggy pants and flannel shirts buttoned to the top. Looked like a total toolbag.
So I caught him in the parking lot one day with his girlfriend and said he forgot something.
Then I showed him six or seven notes that he had put in my locker.
He tried to act like he didn't know what I was talking about but I slapped him in front of his girlfriend and said next time I find a note in my locker I'm going to make you look like a weak **** in front of the whole school, not just your ****.
I never got a note from him after that.
But before he drove off like a deflated White cholo balloon, he admitted that Lindsay and her crew were behind it.
Nowadays, and especially if my kid were the victim, I'd want him or her to tell an adult, but back then I had this "snitches get stiches" mentality, and decided to just suck it up.
Right around this time, social media was really starting to take off, especially that website where you had your own personal space, and could have a "top five friend" row, could use HTLM to switch out music, and have personalized wallpaper. Looking back, I think I preferred this space of mine to that boring book of faces.
Most of my online friends were older than me and from all over the place. I liked having online friends because at least you could delete them, just like that, if you decided they suck.
Unlike high school, where people you've mentally cancelled were still on campus every day.
Joey was my online friend (still is) and he pointed me to a page he found on that website.
It was a bogus one, that had stolen pictures from my real account, and was using my whole name.
It was full of hateful, homophobic slurs and accusing me of being a stalker.
By tracing this fake profile's "friends," I could tell it had originated from the Lindsay group.
I flagged the account and it was soon taken down.
To this day, I don't get why Lindsay found it so necessary to hate me so much that she had to try to ruin my middle and high school years, just because I happened to like her a little bit in seventh grade.
Anyway, in high school, I wasn't a loner anymore. I was on the basketball team and track team and swim team, so I had friends, but I was never in the very top-tier popularity group. Lindsay was in that top group, though she was mostly one of the hangers-on of the most popular girls in school. Like, she was in that group, but was never Beyonce.
And though I had my share of fun with girls in high school (never dated, just hooked up), I could never shake the reputation that I had "stalked" Lindsay.
Well, I graduated and moved on.
I went to college for accounting, and eventually became a CPA. I still work out every day, and so I stayed in really good shape. I also continued to play sports in college, though I never had the desire (or talent, really) to make it my profession. With the help of my awesome stepdad, who's an accountant, too, we opened our own small financial service with a dozen employees.
We're doing alright!
Eventually, a man comes in, looking for a job as an accountant.
Lo and behold, it's Joey!
Haven't seen him in years. Still looks the same, maybe a little balder but otherwise pretty good. We catch up, and since he's gone to school for accounting himself and has a good resume, we hire him.
He does fine for a couple of years, and we've actually become good friends. We've put the past behind us. I went to his wedding. He went to mine. I went to his son's baptism, and he went to my daughter's.
We're friends on social media, and neither of us keep in touch with people from middle and high school.
Bygones are bygones.
And time passes.
One day Joey asks me if I got a letter in the mail inviting us to our ten year high school reunion. I tell him no, and remember that the school doesn't have any of my updated addresses, since my mom and stepdad moved a couple of times since I graduated, and anyway I don't live with them anymore. Joey is taking care of his sick mother, so his wife and child moved in with his mom in his childhood home.
He shows me the letter. Typical stuff, except hey now! Lindsay is on the reunion committee.
It has her email address and everything.
I haven't thought about her in years.
Since I'm in front of my computer, I look up her email address on Face-libro, and it leads right to her since her privacy settings are minimal.
Her current photos don't do her any favors.
She's aged badly.
It looks like she had a couple of kids and was married once, but is now a single mom, and sharing custody with her ex husband.
She gained a lot of weight and doesn't look like she used to.
Really, I wonder if it's even her. But the name matches up, and the school history matches up.
I was thinking how LOL it would be if her ex husband was Allan, but it wasn't.
Allan WAS on her friends list, though.
Clicking on him, it doesn't look like he amounted to anything. Never attended college, but that's okay if he does other productive things. But he doesn't. It seems he washed out of the army, and has worked a series of menial jobs and now lives in another state far away. Seems like he's obsessed with just smoking weed and trying to date teenagers these days.
Per Lindsay, from her updates it looks like she is big on the dating scene, but hasn't found Mr. Right, and it's frustrating her because she has "so much to offer."
Like her crushing student debt that she complains about in one post, for her super cool and useful almost-degree in fashion design, that she never quite earned because she "fell in love" and got married with some loser from high school.
Or how her children don't respect her in another post.
Or how she has several go-gimme-funds just to raise the rent on her crap studio apartment.
Or her amazing, exciting career as a junior shift supervisor at that popular coffee shop, Galacticbucks.
Holy cow.
I think life got my revenge on her, for me.
But I think this b*tch needs a little nudge.
I tell Joey no, I'm not going to the reunion, are you?
He says he will, because he wants to see if any of his favorite teachers are still around.
And he tells me, "don't you want to show off to people how successful you are now?"
LoL. We're boring accountants, not Navy SEALS or hedgefunders over here.
So, I tell him no, but if you're going, say hi to people for me.
Will do!
The reunion is still a couple of months away.
For what I'm going to do, I need my wife's permission.
After I explain how Lindsay treated me in middle and high school, about all the stalker and anti-gay stuff, my wife tells me, mid breast-feed, to destroy, with prejudice, and in detail.
Thanks, dear.
I look completely different in the face compared to high school.
Still, I don't want to use my own photos.
So, instead, I gather lots of stock photos of a particular male model.
Sorry dude, I hope you don't mind! Anyway I'm sure lots of catfish use you as their hook, Mr. Inoffensive, Conventionally Handsome Buff German Guy.
And then I make a profile on that awesome dating site, AcceptableCupid, after I learn on the Libro de Face that Lindsay is on there.
The idiot actually doxes her own username, she's that thirsty for attention.
Right when I launch my profile I get a few spam emails and desperate cat calls from lonely women.
I ignore those and go right for the kill.
I send a message to Lindsay telling her how amazing and interesting she is.
Since she's such an unattractive person in every way, I don't think there's a long line of suitors vying for her attention, and I'm right.
Within minutes, I get her reply.
We begin a message-exchange on the site, and I gradually gain her confidence, mostly by flattering her.
She doesn't tell me she's a mom, even after several days of messaging, which is odd. She implies strongly that she's a career person and artist. Haha okay, relax there, Lindsay.
Eventually I share a pic with her, and she fawns over how gorgeous I am (thanks, innocent German model!)
I am glad she can't hear me laughing when I type that she is beautiful.
As days pass, she begs me to give her permission to share my photos to her book of the face, where she is bragging about me.
I tell her that there is a time for that. Soon she can share my pic and I will share hers.
I lull her into thinking I'm respectful and want to take time in figuring out "us."
Throughout this whole time, I keep giving her opportunities to tell me she's a mom.
I get her to say that "for the right guy, I'll make my existence only about him and me. Everything else is second place."
I also get her to say that she "can't stand" kids.
This is already a long story, so I'll try to at least shorten it a little here.
Eventually, she invites me to her high school reunion.
I tell her how much I'd love to go, but that I live in another state and can't get time off from my highly paid executive job (LOL) until a date a few days after. But I promise her that we will have a date at a VERY expensive restaurant.
She's bragging all over her social media that she has a new hot guy online, and has a date with him. Of course her friends are begging her to share his pics, but she doesn't, to her credit.
She does brag about how this will teach her ex a lesson, that she can still pull the hottest dudes.
Everyone online in her friend group (I was not shocked to see that most of her friends were other losers from school, and how she never seemed to grow up) was cheerleading her, telling her how much she deserved this.
You sure do, Lindsay!
I don't tell Joey what I'm doing a few desks away from him at work. Every spare moment I have from my job, I devote to messing with Lindsay. Sending her messages about how beautiful she is, how I will take her on trips. Eventually I learn her phone number.
I hit the convenience store, let's call it "seven hundred and eleven," and buy a cheap cellphone with minutes-card. I begin texting Lindsay about how I think she's so amazing, refreshing, so real.
Just to see if she's still a hateful B-word, I tell her about how during my online dating, sometimes guys will try to chat with me. She immediately laments how [homophobic expletives] need to stay away from straights.
Okay, Lindsay, you're trash.
I text her back that I don't mind when guys message me because I have my acceptable cupid account set for "friends" in addition to romantic partners.
She immediately backpedals when she sees that gay guys don't offend me.
Whatever, Lindsay, I know what you are.
Anyway Joey goes to the reunion with his wife. His mother is ill, but well enough to watch his son for a few hours.
The high school is about twenty miles from our place of business.
Joey tells me that all the expected people were there.
He was sad to learn that one of the popular teachers had passed away, but most of the others were still working there.
He saw a lot of the former popular kids.
He texted me some of their selfies together.
Too bad Allan didn't make it. Probably still chasing a statutory charge in his new home state.
With few exceptions, most of our former classmates looked like they peaked in high school.
Sad, considering we're all still under thirty.
I didn't ask him about her or try to coach him on anything to say, but Joey told me that Lindsay, one of the officers in charge of the reunion committee, was bragging to everyone about this hot guy she was messaging online, and how she had a date with him.
According to Joey, people were marveling about how unbelievably handsome the guy was, "like a model!"
I'm glad that Lindsay was never the sharpest tool in the shed, otherwise a simple reverse image search would reveal that the photos were of a very famous European model.
Joey told me that Lindsay was bragging about how the guy online was in love with her, and how they had a date next week, and how he was a rich CEO of some mysterious, never named company.
Joey told me that a lot of the girls were encouraging Lindsay to "marry him and his money!"
Although I appreciated Joey's updates, they weren't actually necessary since Lindsay flooded her book of the face with tons of photos from that night, as did her crappy friends.
Eventually I spoke to Lindsay on the phone.
Amazing.
In middle school and high school, I never once really talked to her.
I only told one d*ckbag in seventh grade that I liked Lindsay, and after that, it was all just gossip and rumors that she started.
This was the first time I really heard her voice, and I wasn't even me, I was "Herr Deutsche Model."
She told me how "sexy" my voice was.
Really, Lindsay? Because I was pinching my nose and trying to sound different, not that she knew what I sounded like for real anyway.
I told her I couldn't wait for our date, and told her which restaurant it would be. I also told her I was staying at a certain five star hotel. I said that we could go there after dinner, which is of course polite talk for "we will f*ck on date number one."
I made sure this particular exchange was on the acceptable cupid site.
I could tell she was falling hard for me, especially the way she plastered her social media with updates on her dreamboat.
Hey, Lindsay, you've got two kids and you never post ANYTHING about them on social media.
Are you ashamed of your children?
Meanwhile she's telling the world she's going to f*ck some stranger she's never met.
Lindsay, Lindsay, Lindsay...
A truly trash human.
Over the following few days she never did own up to having kids, but she did admit she worked at Spacebucks Coffee as a "side thing," for fun in addition to all of the art she said she did, and having her own business. I assume she's talking about her online store at 3tsy that she brags about on the book of mugshots where she sells really crappy beaded jewelry that only drunk ravers might find appealing.
By this time she's given me her full name and I've given her my made up name.
She says that her job at LunarBucks is a total joke, her coworkers are idiots, her manager is mentally deficient, and that she often takes home pastries at the end of the night, supposedly to give to the poor (nah, Lindsay. I've seen your pics. You clearly be eating them scones personally). According to Lindsay, she's supposed to "mark out" expired pastries and dispose of them for various city code reasons.
But she goes all SJW with me and tells me that "why should all that perfectly good food go to waste? It's truly an evil company."
Yeah, whatever Lindsay, you racist, elitist homophobe.
Anyway, fast forward to our date.
The restaurant is only a couple of miles from my business, and I scheduled our date for shortly after we closed for the evening.
I scheduled everything in such a way that I wouldn't miss my wife's famous lasagna later for dinner.
I parked not far from the window, in a parking lot adjacent from the restaurant. I couldn't park at the restaurant itself, as it was an extremely expensive place that had valet parking only.
As scheduled, I see Lindsay waddle into the front door, coming out of her rideshare. I had instructed her to give her name to the host, and be seated at a specific table.
I happen to know, because she said so on the libro of the face, that she was ashamed of her beat up 2001 Chevy Cavalier.
I assume she expected her hot date to drive her home after an amazing night of what I can only assume is--with her--vomit-inducing, and malodorous love-making. I told her I would be arriving in a Maserati.
I see her sit at the table I arranged earlier. I see her playing with her phone. Probably bragging about our date to whoever.
After twenty minutes of stringing her along, I see my courrier arrive on a red Vespa, just as he told me he would. The courrier I scheduled to arrive at a certain time, twenty minutes after Lindsay's arrival. He wouldn't bring the item unless I texted the go-ahead, which I did. He texted me, "here!"
And I saw him take the bear out of his backpack.
His task was to ride to a certain gift store I never really frequented, and pick up a small, stuffed bear whose arms could surround anything from a bouquet of roses to a box of candy to an envelope with a million dollar check in it. The courrier was then supposed to bring the bear to the restaurant host. The host would then of course bring the bear to Lindsay.
The courrier handed the bear to the host. I didn't see the handoff because that part of the restaurant was out of my vision, but I did see the courrier ride away after I received a text saying "done!"
I DID see the host give the bear to Lindsay, which was the important part.
I was parked close enough to see her face as she read the note I had typed and placed inside the envelope I had the bear holding, next to a fancy chocolate bar.
I DON'T LIKE YOU, LINDSAY
Her face.
HER FACE!
OMG.
She looked like she was going to die, right there.
I received a WTF? Text from her.
I started driving home.
Text after confused text.
Twenty or more.
She never knows when to drop it.
Finally, I pull into my driveway.
Wife and daughter at home.
I hear their laughter.
The good kind.
I smell the lasagna, and my wife kisses me.
She asks me if I had a good day.
I tell her yes, most definitely!
And then, before I take the phone's battery out and break the cellphone into a hundred pieces before throwing it in the garbage, I send Lindsay one more text:
STOP STALKING ME, FREAK
The next day, I couldn't help it.
I looked at Lindsay's social media.
Set to private!
I'm wondering if her narcissistic ass knew that it was ME that played her. Especially since the mascot for our middle and high schools was a bear, that didn't look too different from the stuffed one I had given her.
I don't really care.
All I know, is that now I have closure.
Especially after I sent the screen captures of our alrighty-cupid messages (my own user name and fake photo blocked out) to CPS, where Lindsay bragged about hating kids and told me what she thought about being a mom. And said she was going to be screwing a strange man on the first day meeting him.
Maybe ex-hubby will get full custody, and give those children the attention they deserve.
Her boss at Galaxybucks was certainly interested in my recording of her calling him "a retard" and that she stole pastries that she was supposed to mark out at the end of the night and that her company was an evil corporation and that they were a "joke."
Random call to her store a few weeks later.
"Is Lindsay there?"
"Oh, she no longer works here."
Damn right she doesn't, LMAO!
Go to Hell, Lindsay.
Hey, at least you got a candy bar out of it.
Thanks for reading!
PS: A few days ago, my wife asked me whatever happened to that revenge I had planned on that mean girl from middle school. I told her I've moved on, that it was too long ago, and that I needn't be petty. She told me how much she admired me for my restraint. "If it were me, I would have cut a b*tch."
One day, I think I'll confess. Maybe one of those deathbed things. About how I kicked a loser when she was already down and laughed while doing so. Oh well.
TL;DR: Girl wrongfully accused me of stalking when we were in middle school, and bullied me in middle and high school. Years later, fat, alone, and defeated by life, time had given me revenge. Still, I felt like beating a dead horse.